I'm thinking of getting a gas fire installed but I don't have a flue or a chimney. It will be against an outside wall and the gas pipe is located behind the skirting where I would like the fireplace.
I understand I can get a balanced flue, power flue or flueless gas fire. I was just wondering if anyone had one of these types and what they thought of them.
The flueless types are quite low output (IIRC, 1.5kW for a habitable room) and put water vapour back into the room (but are practically 100% efficient) so are ideal for use in conjunction with central heating (which provides most of the heat you need but tends to dry out the air).
If you need to seriously heat the room you will need a flued type.
A gas fire doesn't *have* to produce carbon monoxide. In fact if it does, then it's not burning efficiently because the hydrocarbons in the fuel gas are being incompletely burnt (oxidised) into carbon *mon*oxide instead of completely oxidised into carbon *di*oxide.
We got rid of our balanced flue fire as it was old, ugly and kept cutting out. While it was working properly it produced more than enough heat for our
19' x 18' room, so much so that we usually had it set down at minimum once the room had warmed up. Disadvantages are obviously cutting the hole in the wall for the flue, regulations as to where you can put flues, the cost of the fire (much more than a standard, non-balanced flue gas fire) and the cost of installation. Flueless sound like an ideal proposition but you have to remember they put a lot of moisture back into the air.
In the end we went for an electric fire. Doing the calculations on our average usage, the relative cost of the energy sources and the cost of the fires and installation, it would have taken about 10 years for the gas fire to have started to save us money over the electric.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.